slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

This may be the appropriate place to post:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL ON THE OPP!

Y'all have a great one. I always do...my favorite Holiday!

Family and a sumptious meal...can't be beat.

:thumbup: :mrgreen:

Hungry Freaks

Three billion + dollars a year for the past 30 years, when adjusted for inflate, is a significant pile of money.


And, yes, reparations for any African American who can prove one 1/4 or 1/2 slave as a descendant. Pay the money and be done with it. They were promised 40 acres and a mule and didn't get it. Time to make good on it.

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

Reparations? Slavery had a cost not only to blacks but also the nation. The forced "immigration" experience of blacks certainly was more a trial than that of other immigrant groups but the pay off is being part of this new world civilization--an important and significantly contributing part. We are fortunate to have that part and they are fortunate to be part of America. No pay off necessary except a degree of understanding of the social circumstances and handicaps from the long experience of not being accepted...(are you listening, GinnyT? Understanding, if you can manage that little politeness and kindness?).

By the way, how about justice for native Americans? Again I maintain the only reparation is respect and understanding. And I suppose the football teams could understand their viewpoint, though for real the intent was not disrespect but a form of glorification even if stereotyping.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I would agree with this conditionally. Those caveats , if they are given their reparations then they become like everyone else. No special programs for education, no priority treatment for employment, no special government financing for housing, no special head start programs for their children that is beyond what everyone else receives, no special treatment in any form. This would include, but not limited to, abusive language and the use of the word raciest to define or otherwise connote other Americans would be eliminated from casual use. The hyphenated ethnic designation would be necessarily deleted. And no FUTURE claims for new generations. A one time payment to those who can "prove" through documentation (ship records, census, or other reliable means which would not include hearsay or family legends; but limited to empirical proof) that they are true decedents from slaves; being a person of color would not automatically qualify an individual. The claimant would have to prove they are at least a quarter descendent.

Now for the payment. Cost of a mule was approximately $20 in the 1700s, 40 acres of land was approximately $300 during the same period. Inflate that to 400 percent. Add for pain and suffering $1 million each. Grand total of $1,409,000.00. The latest estimate of slave decedents still living in the US is 40 million http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/calculated-minimum-reparation-due-to.html. I believe with the projected savings from special programs that the initial outlay would be off set within two years after payment.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I will no longer dignify your attempts to anger me or belittle me with comments, so I encourage you to forget about me and move on. But, I am flattered that I have occupied so much of your thoughts.

Hungry Freaks

I don't know it that's a good thing or a bad thing-we can't agree 100% 100% of the time.

Some of content of that post is fact but much is just conjecture. I live in an extremely diverse community and see the interactions between different groups the dynamics of the talk and actions made by each group.

The issue of the African Americans' desire to have their past recognized and possibly financially reimbursed for past wrongs seems to get the the crawl of some white people. I was merely pointing out the American Jews, who used the long history of anti-Semitism in general and the Holocaust of European Jews by the Nazis, have used the collective guilt of Europe and, strangely, the United States, to be a lion's share of US foreign aid, military and civilian as well as statehood for land that they claim is historically Jewish. How does the American Jewish population exert so much power of US politics? Why do some remain silent on Israel's money and power grab but yet will go up the walls should any African American even mention reparations. .

Why? Because of a slick pubic relations campaign and the collective power lobbying efforts by AIPAC. We have acted against our own self-interest in the Middle East to please a small segment of the US population. Starting with Suez in 1955, Israelis have been a disruptive force in Middle Eastern geo-politics. Now Israel claims it will not abide by any agreement we make with Iran despite the fact that Israel refuses to acknowledge it's own nuclear arsenal.

Iran has never gone to war with Israel. (it has used proxies) Iran has had it's democratically elected government overthrown by the US and Britain. The Shah, who was the choice for taking the place of Mossedgec ( a secular liberal who was elected in free and fair elections) was the Shah, who ruled with terrible cruelty. The Iranians threw the Shah out and we punished them buy holding billions of Iranian funds in US banks, some of the money we still hold today. And we wonder why the Iranian's hate us. Or why Iran wants a a nuke, with neighbors like Pakistan (nuclear armed) for Soviet states on it's north border (which may have nuclear weapons,) and Israel, which holds nuclear weapons and has taken considerable effort to sabotage anyone else in the region with a nuclear aspirations, who can blame them?.

Our hypocrisy is so obvious-Israeli's have a deep abiding fear of being overrun by more populous Arab neighbors, or anyone else, a fear that is well founded. But if Israel is allowed to skip out on international conventions prohibiting development of a nuclear weapons, and engage in significant nuclear espionage here in the US, why are we so hard on the Iranians, who do belong to the UN Nuclear Proliferation Convention ? Iranians are also afraid of their Arab neighbors (Iran is Persian, not Arab) . They were nearly overrun by a US-supported Iraq not 30 years ago. How do we justify giving more than 25% of all foreign aid to a nation that is an international nuclear scofflaw? Nothing against the Jews, but the right wing over there is just as crazy and immoveable as the right is here. Compromise is seen as a weakness. And Israelis left and right, have a fear of being exterminated, something that does have a solid historical context. I doubt if Israel will ever give up its nukes.

Hey, Israel can do whatever it wants. It's a free country, at least until the Orthodox rabbinical is considered. But why my tax dollar is being used to prop up an increasingly theocratic nation that refuses to abide by any rule of law on what it does. This is a debate the goes on in Israel; the Israeli left is a REAL left-wing group unlike the left is here. The Israeli left has a peace effort that would put to shame anything here in the US. Some in Israelis see the US aid as something that puts them in a difficult place and there is actually a movement to refuse further US aid. But, hey, three + billion bucks is three+ billion bucks. Hard to turn that down.

Maybe African Americans should hire the same pr firm the early Zionists used in lobbying the UN for statehood.

VladimirPee

Africans were here? Where? Did you learn that in Black Studies class lol? Did they tell you that your ancestors were some African King from some great empire too?

Hungry Freaks

I think you'd better crack the history books. If you're using the "Mayflower" as a metaphor for early European immigration, I get it. But the Mayflower itself was from a sect of Presbyterian Englishmen and women. We're talking about immigrants from a nation that had up until the 17th Century, made being Jewish illegal. Refusal to convert was met with death or exile. I think the guy who founded Rhode Island, Williams, I believe, was the first of the colonies to accept Jews and Roman Catholics. The Puritans, not so much.



I'm also not too sure o n your claim most of the Founding Fathers were Presbyterian. Many belong to the Anglican Church, which later become the Episcopalian Church. The exact religious beliefs of many of the Founding Fathers is subject to much debate. Until the Revolution, the American colony existed under rules that required membership in the Anglican Church. One of the big reasons they were so adement on the separation of church and state.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

You'd best burn whatever "history" books you've read.

Hungry Freaks

I think inyourface is talking about the Spanish and Portuguese that had been i n the New World for about a hundred years before English immigration. And both traded in slaves. Take a look at Brazil.

I don't need to take a Black History class to know that fact-it was taught to me in elementary school way back in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I could poke fun at your apparent ignorance of this fact, but I won't. I don't understand why you feel that you have to denigrate the intellectual ability of another to prove a point. "some African King from some great Empire" is a loaded phrase. Are you saying that there were not African kings or empires?-again, maybe you'd do well going back to the books. Looks like the bigotry bug got your butt.

jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI

No longer "dignify" ha.ha. "flattered" ha.ha.ha. Your comments don't "dignify" anything. Why don't you understand the circumstances of blacks? That's all I want from you...understanding...not pity, not belittling, not scorn. Or are you too busy figuring mule cost in 1700? How nonsensical can someone get. Cost of mules--poohpooh thinking. Get real, lady. Get angry and then change yourself for better instead of pretending to be so ladylike prim and proper and picky as the friend you know I'm referring to.

VladimirPee

Sorry but he said " other Europeans and Africans had been here for centuries" doesn't add up to the math. The oldest Portuguese settlement was in 1532. Jamestown was 1607

Hungry Freaks

So the Mayflower didn't carry primarily the Pilgrims, who had fled England for Holland and opted for a colony on the English North American coast? Yes, there was a crew (most died and few stayed) but there's no record of any Lutherians, Jews, blacks or anyone else but While Anglo types even among the crews. . There are fairly well-preserved records about who came over on the Mayflower's first voyage. While the "Presbyterian" part of that might be contested, most modern "Protestants" today would argue the point.

And the second voyage brought more of the same as in the first voyage.

Again, a one liner that doesn't answer the question.

VladimirPee

The right wing in Israel is crazy? What do you support they do? Eliminate their nuclear weapons ? Open borders to allow 300 Million Arabs and 1.4 Billion Muslims to move in and decimate the 8 Million Israeli's? What do YOU propose?

VladimirPee

The Pilgrims strongly believed that the Church of England, and the Catholic Church, had strayed beyond Christ's teachings, and established religious rituals, and church hierarchies, that went against the teachings of the Bible. This belief put them at odds with church officials, who in the early years of King James I tried to have them arrested and thrown in jail for refusing to participate in church rituals. For this reason, many of the Pilgrims fled to Leiden, Holland, where there was religious freedom. However, the Pilgrims had difficulty adjusting to the more permissive Dutch culture, and had difficulty supporting themselves financially.

In Leiden, the Pilgrims' church grew as additional people fled from England. The church pastor was John Robinson. Their church was created around the model of the "ancient church" described in the New Testament, so they had a Church Elder (William Brewster), some deacons, and a deaconess. They strictly honored the Sabbath by not performing any labor on Sunday. They studied the writings of earlier Protestants and Separatists, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, and they even established a printing press to illegally distribute new Separatist and Puritan books in England.
http://mayflowerhistory.com/religion